Michael J. Gottlieb can by no means bear in mind the precise quantity — it’s $148,169,000— {that a} jury ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay the Georgia election staff Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. However Ms. Freeman’s phrases after the December 2023 victory are indelible to him.
“Don’t waste your time being offended at those that did this to me and my daughter,” stated Ms. Freeman 65, who together with her daughter Ms. Moss, 39, was falsely accused by Mr. Giuliani of aiding an imagined plot to steal the 2020 presidential election.
“We’re greater than conquerors.”
Lower than a decade in the past, the 2 girls would have struggled to discover a lawyer. However Mr. Gottlieb, a accomplice on the agency Willkie Farr & Gallagher and a former affiliate counsel within the Obama White Home, represented them free of charge. Satisfied that viral lies threaten public discourse and democracy, he’s on the forefront of a small however rising cadre of legal professionals deploying defamation, one of many oldest areas of the legislation, as a weapon in opposition to a tide of political disinformation.
Mr. Gottlieb has additionally represented the proprietor of the Washington pizzeria focused by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists in addition to the brother of Seth Wealthy, a younger Democratic Nationwide Committee employees member whose 2016 homicide ignited bogus theories implicating his household. Within the Giuliani case, Mr. Gottlieb, his legislation accomplice Meryl Governski and different members of his workforce labored with Defend Democracy, a nonpartisan group that pushes for legal guidelines and insurance policies to counter what it sees as authoritarian threats.
Earlier than the Trump period and the explosion of social media, although, such circumstances have been just about nonexistent.
“The brand new info panorama we’re in is slightly bit just like the Wild West — a lawless area,” stated Ian Bassin, a co-founder of Defend Democracy. Legal professionals, he stated, have turned to defamation, which is legally outlined as any false info, both revealed, broadcast or spoken, that harms the repute of an individual, enterprise or group. “It’s one of the crucial efficient and solely methods for coping with these out-and-out falsehoods,” Mr. Bassin stated.
Previously few years, greater than a dozen high-profile defamation circumstances have made their means by way of the courts. A majority have been introduced in opposition to defendants on the correct, however the correct brings lawsuits too, usually in opposition to media organizations.
In 2020 and 2021, The Washington Put up, CNN and NBC settled a defamation case introduced by Nick Sandmann, a Kentucky highschool scholar, who stated the shops had wrongly described his encounter with a Native American elder as a racially tinged confrontation. Mr. Sandmann’s swimsuit in opposition to different shops, together with The New York Instances, ended final week when the Supreme Court docket declined to listen to the case.
Payouts have been notably giant for defamation circumstances in opposition to the correct. In January the lawyer Roberta Kaplan defeated former President Donald J. Trump in courtroom when a jury ordered him to pay $83 million for defaming her consumer, E. Jean Carroll, a author he sexually abused. Final yr legal professionals from the agency Susman Godfrey secured a $787.5 million settlement for Dominion Voting Techniques from Fox Information, one of many largest ever in a defamation case, after Fox aired bogus theories falsely linking the corporate to election fraud. In late 2022 Sandy Hook households defamed by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones received a complete of practically $1.5 billion from juries in Texas and Connecticut, although Mr. Jones has but to pay them something.
In different circumstances, the individuals harmed, like Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, can not afford legal professionals or wrestle to seek out companies prepared to pursue defendants unable or immune to paying huge damages, like Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Gottlieb has tried to fill that hole.
“The price of bringing a defamation swimsuit to trial could be huge, usually exceeding a quarter-million {dollars}’ value of bills, to say nothing of the worth of legal professional time,” stated Mark Bankston, a lawyer for a few of the Sandy Hook households defamed by Mr. Jones.
Mr. Gottlieb and his workforce check with their circumstances as a “interest” in service to these whose lives and reputations have been broken by individuals with energy and huge on-line followings. “I’ve at all times despised bullies that choose on defenseless or seemingly defenseless individuals,” Mr. Gottlieb, 47, stated in an interview in his Ok Road workplace in Washington. “There are such a lot of methods to make your political factors with out endangering particular person individuals’s lives.”
Mr. Gottlieb’s day job is stuffed with the highly effective consumer listing extra typical of huge Washington legislation companies. He has represented Venezuela’s Citgo petroleum firm; helped the billionaire Steven A. Cohen beat a possible lifetime ban on managing consumer cash after accusations of insider buying and selling at Mr. Cohen’s former hedge fund; and labored with President Biden’s son Hunter on behalf of a Romanian actual property tycoon whose seven-year jail sentence for corruption was later vacated by a Romanian courtroom.
“I perceive there are positively individuals who would say, ‘Wait a minute — litigation for Citgo shouldn’t be the identical because the litigation you’re doing for Ruby and Shaye,’” he stated. “I really feel lucky to have had a profession the place I’ve had all kinds of circumstances and have a observe that works completely different talent units and completely different components of my mind.
“Nevertheless individuals wish to give it some thought and take a look at it’s type of effective with me.”
The Put up-Reality World
Mr. Gottlieb, who was a clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens and served on an Obama administration anti-corruption job power in Afghanistan, had his first foray into the post-truth world in 2016. That was when Mr. Jones and his Infowars outlet unfold the lie that Hillary Clinton and Democratic Occasion operatives have been operating a baby intercourse trafficking ring out of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizzeria owned by James Alefantis.
In December of that yr, a person who had been binging on Infowars “Pizzagate” episodes fired a rifle contained in the restaurant. Nobody was injured, however the gunman’s journey to Washington to avenge an imagined crime foreshadowed a collection of violent assaults by conspiracy theorists, together with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rebellion.
Mr. Jones insisted that the First Modification protected the lies he had broadcast, like most defendants in these circumstances. However threatened with a lawsuit, he made an on-air retraction and eliminated all Pizzagate content material from Infowars’ web site and social media channels. The total settlement stays confidential.
Quickly after the Pizzagate case, Mr. Gottlieb represented Aaron Wealthy, whose brother Seth Wealthy, 27, labored for the Democratic Nationwide Committee and was gunned down in a botched theft in 2016. The case stays unsolved, and wild theories that Seth Wealthy was killed by Democrats unfold from on-line fever swamps to Fox Information. Aaron Wealthy and his dad and mom have been implicated within the plots, doxxed and harassed.
“If this had occurred to me or my brother or sister and any individual was doing this to my dad and mom, I might go ballistic,” Mr. Gottlieb stated. “And nobody was serving to them.”
In 2018 Mr. Gottlieb and Aaron Wealthy sued The Washington Instances in addition to an web provocateur, Matt Sofa, and a businessman, Ed Butowsky, for spreading falsehoods that the 2 brothers had bought D.N.C. paperwork in a plot that resulted in Seth Wealthy’s homicide. Mr. Wealthy finally obtained a confidential settlement that included a retraction of the falsehoods unfold by each males and the newspaper, in addition to an apology to the Wealthy household. Mr. Wealthy’s dad and mom retained Susman Godfrey and sued Fox Information. They obtained a confidential money settlement, however no apology.
The Wealthy case had taken years. At one level Mr. Gottlieb was named in a sweeping defamation lawsuit filed by one of many defendants, which was later dropped.
The aftermath of the 2020 election introduced extra calls from potential shoppers. Mr. Gottlieb appealed for assist to Mr. Bassin, the co-founder of Defend Democracy, who had served with Mr. Gottlieb within the Obama White Home Counsel’s Workplace.
The Georgia Case
Lower than two months later, Mr. Gottlieb and his workforce have been writing the criticism in Ruby Freeman, et al., v. Rudolph Giuliani.
In his frenzied public scramble to make his case that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani, the previous president’s lawyer, had unfold the false story that Ms. Freeman and her daughter Ms. Moss had colluded to falsify outcomes whereas counting ballots in Georgia. He falsely claimed {that a} video exhibiting Ms. Freeman handing a small merchandise to her daughter — a ginger mint — was the 2 girls exchanging USB thumb drives “as in the event that they’re vials of heroin and cocaine.”
Mr. Trump echoed the bogus allegations. In an notorious taped cellphone name with Georgia election officers, Mr. Trump named Ms. Freeman repeatedly, calling her a “skilled vote scammer” and “hustler.”
Threats poured in to the 2 girls. Individuals known as them traitors and, utilizing racial slurs, demanded they be lynched or shot. Others banged on Ms. Freeman’s entrance door and lurked exterior her residence, forcing her into hiding. Ms. Moss had to surrender her job as an election employee and struggled to seek out work.
Mr. Giuliani stated he would show his innocence. However he did not submit court-ordered paperwork, testify or name witnesses. Within the courtroom, he fiddled together with his cellphone and rolled his eyes whereas the 2 girls described their terror.
In December, a jury in federal courtroom in Washington ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss the $148 million. The case was placed on maintain after Mr. Giuliani declared chapter, and Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are actually suing Mr. Giuliani once more, for his continued false statements about them.
Legislation for Reality, a part of Defend Democracy, has within the meantime filed defamation fits in opposition to the makers of the election conspiracy concept movie “20,000 Mules”; James O’Keefe, the previous chief of Venture Veritas, a right-wing group recognized for its sting operations; and Kari Lake, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, on behalf of individuals smeared by lies Ms. Lake informed concerning the 2020 election.
Regardless of the exercise, legal professionals who see themselves as crusaders in opposition to lies will not be declaring victory. Their circumstances are excessive profile and goal key disinformation spreaders, however they acknowledge that they don’t put a dent in additional basic widespread disinformation, like false statements about Covid vaccines.
“I believe these lawsuits could also be efficient in stemming a few of the worst viral disinformation,” stated Katie Fallow, a senior counsel on the Knight First Modification Institute at Columbia College. “However there could also be limits to how efficient these lawsuits could be when there are different incentives, notably political ones, to maintain spreading it.”
Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.
